The Mississauga mayors race has been a chippy affair with no shortage of disparagements between two frontrunners, veterans Carolyn Parrish and Bonnie Crombie, and a strong showing by first-time mayoral candidate Alvin Tedjo.<\/p>\n
Polls released in early October by Mainstreet Research, Liaison Strategies and Pallas Data had support for former mayor Crombie between 25 and 30 per cent, for the incumbent Parrish between 28 and 34 per cent and one-term Ward 2 councillor Tedjo between 21 and 26 per cent.<\/p>\n
Election day across Ontario is Oct. 26.<\/p>\n
The rivalry between Crombie and Parrish, both former Liberal MPs, goes back to 2011 when Crombie defeated Parrish in a Ward 5 council byelection by just 241 votes. Parrish supplanted Crombie as Mississauga mayor in 2024 when the latter sought the leadership of the provincial Liberals, only to suffer an election defeat at the hands of the Doug Ford Progressive Conservatives and lose her own riding contest.<\/p>\n
A major campaign flashpoint has been Parrish\u2019s support for a $2.5-billion downtown redevelopment proposal that could include a new performance venue, convention centre, hotel, offices, rental housing, retail and public spaces. The existing Living Arts Centre, described by Parrish as a \u201cmausoleum,\u201d would eventually be replaced.<\/p>\n
Crombie says the proposal is a \u201cvanity\u201d project for Parrish that would require substantial taxpayer investment. In a recent interview she said generally Parrish \u201cdoes not have the best interests of the city at heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parrish said public spending on the downtown renewal project would be minimal: \u201cWe don\u2019t build hotels. We don\u2019t build apartment buildings. We don\u2019t do that. We just build the music centre, and we have to put more underground parking in.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur cost will be under half a billion, and the rest will be other people spending their money in our downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parrish refrained from direct criticism of Crombie during an interview but during a debate said, \u201cYou abandoned our city, failed to win a local riding and ended up turfed by your party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crombie acknowledged, \u201cThe campaign has been mean spirited, but it has been a great opportunity for me to not only outline what I have delivered for people in the past, but new ideas that we will deliver in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Parrish highlights housing successes<\/p>\n
During a recent interview, Parrish highlighted the success of her regime\u2019s Housing Task Force, securing housing-enabling infrastructure funding and streamlining the project approvals process, with the city eventually creating a \u201cthree strikes and you\u2019re in\u201d process to ensure swift project approvals.<\/p>\n
She noted Mississauga was awarded $400 million through the federal-provincial Development Charges Reduction Program. The city says almost 18,000 units are now in process or under construction.<\/p>\n
The three-strikes plan curtails endless back-and-forth between developers and city planning staff. After a third developer submission addressing staff requests, Parrish explained, \u201cIf there are still concerns, both parties meet in a room, close the door, have their red pens out. Nobody leaves until it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow the fun part of that is we\u2019ve never had to do it in the last two years because everybody knows that\u2019s the end result.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parrish said she expects the city\u2019s recent one-year pause on new data centres to be overturned for legal reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a little disappointed in it,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had a study that we were doing to get into water use, noise, all the things that people are concerned about in Arizona, but we don\u2019t have here. And that report was due to come just after the election. Hopefully, that\u2019ll soothe out everybody\u2019s concerns, and we\u2019ll be able to go ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parrish said Mississauga must accommodate population growth by building up rather than out, with buildings of up to 35 storeys permitted as-of-right along major transit corridors and around hubs.<\/p>\n
She said the city is also considering fourplexes, fiveplexes and sixplexes in established neighbourhoods, provided they fit on their lots, with on-street parking among the options being explored as in Toronto.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a very multicultural population here, people from all over the world, all different religions, all different customs, and they mix really quite well in our city,\u201d she said. \u201cSo we want to make sure that we accommodate some of the preferences of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among other permitting reforms, Parrish noted the city is now processing rezonings and applications simultaneously; its managers have supported an aggressive attitude among new planning staff; and the city now has a completely computerized permitting system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no more lugging plans in and going through sheets of paper. Everything\u2019s sent in, and the answers come back out very quickly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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Crombie addresses commitment issue<\/p>\n
During her interview Crombie first addressed whether her heart was into municipal politics, given that she left the mayor\u2019s job in January 2024 to seek provincial office.<\/p>\n
She loves the city, she said, and when she \u201cleft briefly, it was to fight for more for Mississauga. I mean, I thought a premier from Mississauga could really be a huge advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Returning to Mississauga after the provincial election, she intended to work in the private sector. But, she said, \u201cEverywhere I went, people stopped me and said their life wasn\u2019t affordable in Mississauga. They didn\u2019t feel communities were any safer. The city was mired in traffic and gridlock and congestion, and things were better before, and I really needed to think about returning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mississauga currently has a development-charge relief program in place for eligible projects including a 50-per-cent reduction for singles and full relief for many rentals. Crombie noted when she was mayor she called for the elimination of development charges.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they\u2019ve had their day,\u201d she said. \u201cI think they should be waived. I think the provincial or the federal government or a combination of both need to make cities whole, and I don\u2019t think it can be politicized.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crombie said she does not detect any public appetite to \u201cknock down\u201d the Living Arts Centre downtown and build a new one. As for hotels and other private efforts, she said if the market determines there is a need, it would build.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the same with a convention centre, she said: \u201cI know we\u2019ve got a lot of asks into the province right now for things that we dearly need, and convention centre is not high on that list. So it would be up to the developer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crombie said when she was mayor she was busy advocating overseas for Mississauga, as she is not a stay-at-home mayor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a huge track record of doing that. Going to Japan, sitting down with CEOs,\u201d she said. \u201cI went to the Paris Air Show and convinced Bombardier not to go to Whitby, to come to Mississauga.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crombie said she understands the development community, including the need for reduced costs and better financing options.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been a huge ally to the industry over many years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to be great partners to them. You know, I\u2019m happy to pre-zone areas in the city that we think are ripe for rezoning, so that they can build.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Tedjo makes his mark<\/p>\n
The Daily Commercial News was unable to arrange an interview with candidate Alvin Tedjo by our publishing deadline.<\/p>\n
According to various sources, Tedjo pledges to establish a Mississauga Housing Corporation to build affordable homes through public-private and non-profit partnerships, allow six-storey buildings as of right along major arterial roads, and speed up housing approvals; expand rapid transit through dedicated bus lanes and improved connections to GO Transit; and freeze the city portion of property taxes for two years while seeking efficiencies and provincial funding to support growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mississauga mayors race has been a chippy affair with no shortage of disparagements between two frontrunners, veterans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":940121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194297],"tags":[49,48,55405],"class_list":["post-940120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mississauga","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mississauga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=940120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/940121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}